“Interactive fiction, which once went by the name ‘text adventure,’ is having a moment.”
— New York Times (July 7, 2014)

WordPlay is our free one-day festival celebrating the most interesting uses of writing and words in contemporary games. Like last year, there will be a curated game showcase, talks by creators about the craft, and ways for the public to try their hand at making games.

Sat. Nov. 8, 12-5pm
Toronto Reference Library
789 Yonge St. (Bloor-Yonge subway)
Free

Featuring international special guests!

• Andrew Plotkin (Shade, Spider and Web) will be talking about the just-released iPhone text game he Kickstarted, Hadean Lands: an alchemical interplanetary thriller.
• Deirdra “Squinky” Kiai (Dominique Pamplemousse) will be presenting their interactive play, Coffee: A Misunderstanding, where all the actors are audience members.

If you would like to submit or suggest a writerly game — a game with exceptional writing or uses writing in an integral way released in the last year — please do so via this form before midnight on Sunday October 12th. You can submit your own game, or a game you feel strongly about. No submission fee, Toronto and international games welcome.

If you would like to volunteer to help (10 volunteer hours earn you Hand Eye Society membership and voting rights in the January Annual General Meeting) please email us and we’ll loop you in on volunteer opportunities in the lead up to and on the day itself.

Our volunteer programming committee (Sarah Chu, David Fono, Will O’Neill, Filipe Salgado, Kaitlin Tremblay, Sagan Yee) will have a few exciting programming announcements to make down the line!

Dara Gold created the lovely tea-stained illustration above for WordPlay 2014.

“What kind of movies do you like?”

“I don’t like movies. Too violent.”

Sounds silly, right? But that conversation happens all the time, just with “games” instead of “movies”. Lots of people confuse a single well-known genre with the totality of the medium.

But we believe there’s a game for everyone, just like there’s a book for everyone. Not everyone is an avid reader, but thanks to a cultural literacy around books, pretty much everyone has an appreciation for them.

Game Curious? is a game literacy program to help people become familiar and comfortable with games. People who have never identified as gamers, but who are none-the-less interested in exploring the breadth of expression currently blossoming in games.

If you are reading this, you are probably familiar and comfortable with games! But you can still participate:

Bring a game curious friend (or two) to our first session.

Your game curious friend is perhaps that friend whose eyes don’t glaze over when you talk about a game you like. Whose eyes linger on the games on your phone. Maybe it’s your aunt, or a cousin, your boyfriend, or the friend who’s up for doing anything so long as it’s interesting.

Half of each session people get to play a selection of games, and the second half is a discussion about those games. Sagan Yee, who ran the last amazing Game Curious? program as well as our recent Artsy Games Incubator, is curating and coordinating again.

It starts Saturday Sept. 13 and runs for six weeks. Here are the details:

Saturdays 1-3pm
Toronto Reference Library
(Browsery, Main Floor)
789 Yonge St. (Bloor-Yonge subway station)
FREE!
Recommended for ages 16+
Facebook Event

More information and an optional registration here.

If you have any questions, email Sagan!

We’re collaborating with the Ontario Science Centre for their ScienceRocks! Night this month.

ScienceROCKS! transforms the Science Centre into a music playground, where adults 19+ can rock out to live performances, engage in innovative presentations, explore the new exhibition The Science of Rock ‘N’ Roll and enjoy ROLLING STONES AT THE MAX on the IMAX® screen. Each evening event rocks a different theme, and all are accompanied by great food, cocktails and rock-it science! August 21’s theme invites you to Experiment with NEW TECHNOLOGY & MAKING MUSIC.

Here’s some of the things we’re bringing to the night:

• See a special sneak preview of Pop Sandbox‘s upcoming music-based mobile video game featuring top Canadian indie artists.

• Learn about Jonathan Guberman‘s research and development process for the Pianocade, a synthesizer inspired by vintage arcade games, and play a few tunes yourself.

• Get your groove on with booty-shaking tunes from DJ Dualryan, who will be spinning a selection of electronic music ranging from ambient to trance.

• Play through albums by Beck and deadmau5 or compose your own musical levels in Sound Shapes, an award-winning video game that is part instrument, part gaming experience.

More info and buy $15 tickets here, 19+.

As a videogame arts not-for-profit, much of our ability to execute our initiatives comes from volunteer power. But it’s also a great way to engage with like-minded game enthusiasts and advocate for a medium you love.

Here are some of the Hand Eye Society projects we’ll be discussing our needs for:

• Game Curious?: Our play & discussion group is starting next month, and we need to get the word out! We’ll also need people at the sessions themselves.
• Pop-up Arcades: We’re doing game exhibitions at the Wavelength music festival and the Ontario Science Centre in August, and we need friendly people to invite people to play games.
• WordPlay Festival: We need folks to help us help the public with the showcase of writerly games, as well as be on the program advisory team.
• and other new projects, like the Toronto Videogame Wiki, as well as (perhaps) ideas you bring?

If you have 10 hours between now and the end of the year, it’s the perfect time to jump in!

Thurs. August 14, 6pm-7pm
Toronto Reference Library (789 Yonge Street, North of Bloor)
Room B1, in the basement next to the Star Newspaper Room

Drop us a line if you can’t make the session & let us know which of the above appeals to you.

The Artsy Games Incubator: Writing Edition is focused on writers of all stripes — novelists, journalists, bloggers, scriptwriters, zinesters, poets — who are interested in the expressive possibilities of videogames, but who have little to no experience with programming or gamemaking software. Meeting once a week for six weeks, participants will be introduced to tools, guest mentors, and community resources that will further their exploration of the interactive medium. By the end each will have made their own game.

After the program, they will also have the opportunity to showcase their work at WordPlay Festival of Writerly Games in Toronto as well as submit to the international Interactive Fiction Competition, now in its 20th year. By making videogame creation more accessible to a wider variety of artistic practices, AGI: Writing Edition hopes to continue the exploration of game art beyond stereotypical characters and action-driven plots into more diverse and expressionistic territory.

Our previous incubator focused on animators, and you can check out their games and video documentation here. (Please note that in contrast to these games, the games produced by the Writing Edition participants will be mostly text-based.)

PROGRAM DETAILS
Number of participants: 6
Cost: FREE!

Story Planet
1165 Bloor Street West (near Dufferin), Toronto
Runs every Wednesday from August 20 to September 24 (6 sessions)
6:30 – 9:30 pm
Coordinator: Novelist, filmmaker, and gamemaker Jim Munroe
Contact: jim@handeyesociety.com

Please fill out this form by August 13, midnight.
Update: applications are closed. We will select and inform our 6 applicants by August 15th.

No programming experience is needed, although some familiarity with computers will help. We are primarily looking for applicants with fresh writing styles and sensibilities we haven’t seen in games before, and while past experience is useful to note there are no particular requirements regarding publication.

Historical Note: While the original Artsy Games Incubators (2007-2009) involved any kind of artists, this new AGI series will focus on specific artforms. Subscribe to the HES mailing list if you’d like updates or hear how to apply to future incubators.

The Artsy Games Incubator is a Hand Eye Society initiative made possible by a grant from the Ontario Arts Council. The artwork above was created by Matt Hammill.

The Artsy Games Incubator: Animation Edition was a 6-week game making workshop for animators that we ran a few months back.

Check out the video about it that includes gameplay footage of the games that the participants made as well as shots of their TAAFI panel.

Then download their games and play them yourself!

The next Artsy Games Incubator is for writers and will be starting very soon. If you’re not already, make sure you’re subscribed to the Hand Eye email updates for info on how to apply.

CrumbQuest (Lilja Hlín Pétursdóttir)
Download (30.8m, cross platform .swf)

Keys (Debbie Yu)
Download (4.7m, Windows .exe)

Dream Warrior (Paloma Dawkins)
Download (37.5m, Windows .exe)

Wizards of Trinity Bellwoods (Christopher de Castro)
Download (7.6m, Windows .exe)

Futility (Mike McDonnell)
Download (7.2m, cross platform .swf)

Thanks much to the mentors, our partners, the instructors and the participants themselves for sharing the betas of their games.

Capybara Games’ Nathan Vella did a great job hosting last night’s IGF Awards, which were sadly lacking in any wins for Toronto nominees Jazzpunk and The Yawhg.

One of the best exhibits at GDC, alt.ctrl features alternative controllers for games and includes Droqen and Patrick Dinnen’s Analog Defender (pictured above) and Droqen’s Bonus Look. Check out Destructoid coverage/photos here.

This headline says it all: “Lovers In A Dangerous Spacetime steals the show at GDC 2014’s Indie Megabooth“.

Zack Kotzer at Now Magazine talks to GDC goers here.

Tomorrow the Curating Video Game Culture: The New Wave of Video Game Events panel is open to anyone with a GDC pass (even an expo). It “brings together talks from five leading organizers of a new wave of cultural video game events, including Babycastles (New York), Punk Arcade (Los Angeles), Hand Eye Society (Toronto), Fantastic Arcade (Austin) and The Wild Rumpus (London) to talk about their experiences in starting and growing cultural video game events, and the unique and diverging motivations that guide their work.” We will be having a picnic in the Yerba Buena park afterwards at 1pm that anyone is welcome to join.

Tonight’s OMDC Ontario Social (co-hosted by the Hand Eye Society) appears to be at capacity, but to those who RSVP’d — see you there!

For those who missed the first sold out AGO event, the Fancy Videogame Party, they have thoughtfully provided some video documentation.

For linkage to the awesome games featured at FVP check out our posts here and here.

Note: In the video “Fun Hops” is attributed to Ryan Henwood, but it was co-written with DualRyan.

As this Toronto Star article reports, our iconic indie arcade cabinets are now available for free play to the public in the AGO’s Community Gallery as a part of an exhibit called AGO: Artsy Games Organizing. It also features infographics showing the world-wide spread of the Torontron idea and a timeline of Toronto’s game community over the past five years.

You can check out the exhibit at the Fancy Videogame Party, if you were lucky enough to get tickets to our birthday bash before they sold out last week. If not, access to the Weston Family Community Gallery is free during AGO hours and the exhibit runs until March 21st. (And feel free to come by the Artist-In-Residence Studio down the hall to say hi!)

We’re currently taking applications for venues to host the cabinets after that. We’re also looking at upgrading the hardware, so if you have an old PC you’d consider donating please get in touch.

Tickets are still available for the final game-related AGO event, Meet the Artists: Jim Munroe, Mark Connery & Jonathan Mak.

Photo: Nick Kozak, Toronto Star